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Comment Re:Lawyers (Score 1) 43

by FauxReal (#41759775) Attached to: Analytics Company Settles Charges For User Tracking
Their contribution was to help pave the way for the lawsuit to disappear. Sounds like a win/win between them and the defendants. Also, the plaintiffs get a settlement. A technical win/win/win. I'm sure everyone will spend the next weekend at their winter beach houses celebrating with some fine caviar and champagne relieved to see that privacy is once again on their side.

Comment Re:iSuppli ignores recent history (Score 2) 513

by FauxReal (#41532815) Attached to: Why Ultrabooks Are Falling Well Short of Intel's Targets
I agree, I was convinced to shell out the cash for the first time in 2009 after always owning PCs (and a couple free Ataris & 1 free Mac in the 90s).It was definitely more expensive than comparable Win laptops. But I had a good job and low expenses. What got me was that it had a metal case, the multi touch track pad is awesome and it was a reasonably powerful computer. Also, I dj in nightclubs using Serato which happens to be more stable in OS X (it started on the Linux platform but I suppose they switched due to OS market share). I currently dual boot it in Win7 (which I am using at the moment). I also got a small amount of RAM then installed my own after my warranty was up. If I had to gripe about anything at this point it's really mostly the price and sometimes I wanna mess with something that OS X just doesn't allow me to access, but the fact that it's based on BSD has remedied some of those issues.
Education

Submission + - With 'Access Codes,' Textbook Pricing More Complicated Than Ever (chronicle.com)

Submitted by
jyosim
jyosim writes: "Some see it as the latest ploy by textbook publishers to kill the used book market: 'access codes' for online supplements for course work. In some cases professors require students to purchase these codes in order to even see the required homework. One U. of Maine's student's struggle to find a reasonably priced textbook demonstrates the limits the new publisher practices put on students, but some argue that ultimately the era of digital course materials will be better for student learning."
Android

Submission + - Former NASA engineer designs app to chart water quality (trust.org)

Submitted by
DevotedSkeptic
DevotedSkeptic writes: "When environmental engineer John Feighery got an internship at NASA in the 1990s, he wanted to be an astronaut but he was given a job working with a team designing the U.S. bathroom for the space station.

After the Columbia Space Shuttle accident in 2003 left seven crew members dead, the Space Shuttle programme was suspended and further work on the International Space Station was delayed.

Feighery turned his focus from managing water, sanitation and health problems in space to those on Earth.

After he left the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Feighery tested well water in Bangladesh for a job funded by the National Institutes of Health, part of the U.S. Health and Human Services department.

He felt the work, which involved using heavy equipment, charting notes and locations by hand and transporting samples in incubators to a distant laboratory could be simpler and less expensive.

That's how he came up with the idea to use inexpensive testing equipment available online, and mWater — an Android app that records the data results of water quality tests and maps them.

The app, which is available in the Google Play Store, also allows users to leave notes for other users about the appearance of the water, its scent, and how the water is flowing from the source, building up an archive of information over time.

A photograph of the water source can be uploaded and location details are registered automatically using a GPS reading from the mobile device.

Health workers can use the data or even go with a sick patient and easily test the water where they live.

"Anybody can look at it and see what's going on to see if anyone else might get infected," Feighery said. "When fecal contamination occurs somewhere it is the first precursor of disease in water systems. Before cholera spreads there's usually some failure in the sanitation system."

Giving poor people proper access to safe water and sanitation would save 2.5 million people a year from dying from diarrhoea and other diseases spread by a lack of hygiene, according to the charity WaterAid."
Ubuntu

Submission + - World's first Linux Ultrabook ships (pcworld.com)

Submitted by
Rozzin
Rozzin writes: "Everyone here has heard of Dell's `Project Sputnik', but a little manufacturer of strictly Linux computers in California appears to have beat them to the punch: PCWorld reports that ZaReason has started shipping the world's first Linux Ultrabook. And they've somehow managed to fit 16 GB of RAM and two solid-state drives inside, along with a 6-hour battery and 14" display. CEO Cathy Malmrose explains: "It's one of my pet peeves that the world's most robust, high-end software is so often housed in low-end, unappealing machines or, worse, tweaked to work on machines that were built for Windows. Our goal is to build hardware that more aptly matches the high-end aspects of FOSS"."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Hugo awards live stream cut by copyright bot (io9.com)

Submitted by
Penmanpro
Penmanpro writes: "Quotes from the linked article "UStream's incorrectly programmed copyright enforcement squad had destroyed our only access."

"just as Neil Gaiman was giving an acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script, "The Doctor's Wife." Where Gaiman's face had been were the words, "Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement." ""
Education

Submission + - We Need a Longer School Year

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Jennifer Davis writes that while summer holds a special place in our hearts: lazy afternoons, camping at the lake, warm evenings gazing at the moon, languid summers can be educationally detrimental, with most youth losing about two months of grade-level equivalency in math computational skills over the summer and students from low-income families falling even further behind. A consensus is building that the traditional nine-month school year might be a relic of the 20th century that has no place in an increasingly competitive global work force and an analysis of charter schools in New York reveals that students are most likely to outperform peers if they attend schools that are open at least 10 days more than the conventional year. What of the idea that summer should be a time of respite from the stresses of school? There are two wrong notions wrapped up in this perspective. The first is that somehow summer is automatically a magical time for children but as one fifth-grader, happy to be back at school in August, declared, "Sometimes summer is really boring. We just sit there and watch TV." The second misperception is that school is automatically bereft of the excitement and joy of learning. On the contrary, as the National Center on Time and Learning describes in its studies of schools that operate with significantly more time, educators use the longer days and years to enhance the content and methods of the classroom. "We should expect our schools to furnish today's students with the education they will need to excel in our global society," says Davis. "But we must also be willing to provide schools the tools they need to ensure this outcome, including the flexibility to turn the lazy days of summer into the season of learning.""
Google

Submission + - Google Pulls Access to Unsupported but Popular Weather API (programmableweb.com)

Submitted by
drsmack1
drsmack1 writes: "The curious popularity of the Google Weather API appears to be coming to a close. The search giant never officially supported the feature, but developers have used the unofficial feed available from the iGoogle homepage. With iGoogle now set for deprecation in November, developers are reporting that the once simple weather API is no longer returning data."
EU

Submission + - EU Calls For Spectrum Sharing for Mobile Data (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "The European Union has proposed that operators should share their spectrum, to make better use of it. The European authorities want to go beyond the "white space" re-use of geographic gaps in spectrum, acknowledging that intelligent radio systems can now avoid interference. The EU wants operators to allow other players onto their licensed spectrum with short range equipment, in exchange for help building wireless infrastructure and create more mobile data capacity"

Comment I'm surprised at who is now making fun of Apple (Score 3, Interesting) 385

by FauxReal (#41183777) Attached to: Side-Effect of the Apple v. Samsung Trial: Increased Sales for Samsung
There's been a new comedic meme emerging, "Anything you do might get you sued by Apple." and people are starting to run with it. Maybe the 1 Billion dollar verdict sounds ridiculous to people who's assets are measured in thousands?

Non-technophile and iphone owning friends of mine are posting memegenerator images or making silly comments about the lawsuit on Facebook. I'm seeing the same stuff from random people on sites like imgur and tumblr. Samsung also just unveiled a new Galaxy mirrorless interchangeable lens (AKA 4/3s AKA 3rd gen) android powered digital camera that some people are excited about.

Personally, I'm not sure on what the reason is but I am surprised at how many people aren't cheering for Apple in this one.

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